A fabulous friendship feast for the eyes and the heart.
A friendly reminder that each friendship is special in its own unique way.
This follow-up to Henn’s All Kinds of Animal Families (2021) features unusual animal friendships. These friendly animal pairs live all over the world, in the backyard, the forest, the oceans, rivers, and the savanna. Right double-page spreads put the animals front and center, sometimes with an unusual perspective, such as a bird’s-eye view of two different birds offering worms to a nest full of hungry babies with gaping mouths, but always with crisp details: The stark contrasts of the black-and-white zebras, the clearly delineated hippos half submerged in a muddy river, and a dolphin and humpback splashing along a coastline all pop. Each spread has text on two levels. For younger listeners, a one-sentence statement summarizes the spread’s content. “Occasionally, friends can be friends just because.” For listeners ready for more, there is a short description that offers more detail. “[T]he rufous woodpecker actually lays its eggs in the middle of the black tree ants’ nest. The ants protect the eggs from being eaten by other creatures—but no one really knows why they do this!” Backmatter thumbnail entries contain even more fun facts about each animal depicted: A hippo can hold its breath for up to seven minutes under water, but it can’t swim. (It actually runs along the river bottom.)
A fabulous friendship feast for the eyes and the heart. (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-68464-316-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kane Miller
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
A fun, educational science book that thoughtfully portrays kids of color engaging with and learning from nature and each...
In her latest science-focused picture book, Rockwell offers perspectives from two kids with opposing opinions about insects.
A Black girl with long braids and glasses announces her love of insects while a boy of Asian descent, who drops his sandwich running from two houseflies, says he hates them. Throughout this picture book, which teems with color and motion, the girl focuses on the positives, like their beauty, role as pollinators, and benefits to the soil, as the boy highlights the negatives, like their penchant for stinging, the ugliness of insects like fleas, and the damage some such as aphids do to plants. Readers can decide for themselves whether the two protagonists find some points of agreement. The final double-page spread illustrates all of the insects that appear in the book and invites readers to revisit earlier pages to find them, including butterflies, beetles, bees, a mosquito, a cricket, and more. This informational early reader employs a controlled vocabulary that intentionally repeats words and phrases to facilitate independent reading. Many recognizable insects appear in the book, like the field cricket and the bumblebee, but Rockwell also includes some, such as the little wood satyr butterfly and the cucumber beetle, that will pique curiosity and encourage budding entomologists to explore further to learn about bugs they’ve never met.
A fun, educational science book that thoughtfully portrays kids of color engaging with and learning from nature and each other. (Informational early reader. 4-7)Pub Date: July 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4759-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Just the ticket to spark or nurture early interest in the wonders of the natural world.
“Extreme” gets a broad definition (ticks?), but the first-rate photographs and easy-to-read commentary in this survey of animals adapted to harsh habitats will win over budding naturalists.
Sixteen creatures ranging from hot-springs bacteria and the tiny but nearly invulnerable water bear to sperm whales parade past, sandwiched between an introductory spread and a full gallery of thumbnails that works as a content review. The animals are presented in an ordered way that expedites comparisons and contrasts of body features or environments. The sharply reproduced individual stock photos were all taken in the wild and include a mix of close-up portraits, slightly longer shots that show surroundings and more distant eyewitness views. The Roops present concrete facts in simple language—“Penguins have feathers and thick fat to keep them warm”—and vary the structures of their two- to four-sentence passages so that there is never a trace of monotony. Like its co-published and equally inviting title, Melissa Stewart’s World’s Fastest Animals, this otherwise polished series entry closes with a marginally relevant small-type profile of a herpetologist at the American Museum of Natural History.
Just the ticket to spark or nurture early interest in the wonders of the natural world. (Informational early reader. 5-7)Pub Date: April 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4549-0631-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: Feb. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2014
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